late yourself,' he said. 'In fact, if I hadn't heard you speak, I'd say you were a standing corpse. Been whooping it up with the wife?'
The Vice-Principal shuddered. He still hadn't got over the horror of seeing his first dead body in the flesh, rather than on the box, and trying to drown the memory in brandy hadn't helped. 'Where the hell did you get to last night?'
'Oh, here and there, don't you know,' said Wilt. He had no intention of telling the V-P he did extra-mural teaching.
'No, I don't,' said the V-P. 'I tried calling your house and all I got was some infernal answering service.'
'That'd be one of the computers,' said Wilt. 'The quads have this programme. It runs on tape, I think. Quite useful really. Did it tell you to fuck off?'
'Several times,' said the Vice-Principal.
'The wonders of science. I've just been listening to Chesterton praising'
And I've just been listening to the Police Inspector,' cut in the V-P, 'on the subject of Miss Lynchknowle. He wants to see you.'
Wilt swallowed. Miss Lynchknowle hadn't anything to do with the prison. It didn't make sense. In any case, they couldn't have got on to him so quickly. Or could they? 'Miss Lynchknowle? What about her?'
'You mean you haven't heard?'
'Heard what?' said Wilt.
'She's the girl who was in the toilet,' said the V-P. 'She was found dead in the boiler-room last night.'
'Oh God,' said Wilt. 'How awful.'
'Quite. Anyway, we had the police swarming all over the place last night and this morning there's a new man here. He wants a word with you.'
They walked down the corridor to the Principal's office. Inspector Hodge was waiting there with another policeman. 'Just a matter of routine, Mr Wilt,' he said when the Vice-Principal had shut the door. 'We've already interviewed Mrs Bristol and several other members of the staff. Now I understand you taught the late Miss Lynchknowle?'
Wilt nodded. His previous experience with the police didn't dispose him to say more than he had to. The sods always chose the most damning interpretation.
'You taught her English?' continued the Inspector.
'I teach Senior Secretaries Three English, yes,' said Wilt.
'On Thursday afternoons at 2.15 p.m.?'
Wilt nodded again.
'And did you notice anything odd about her?'
'Odd?'
'Anything to suggest that she might be an addict, sir.'
Wilt tried to think. Senior Secretaries were all odd as far as he was concerned. Certainly in the context of the Tech. For one thing, they came from 'better families' than most of his other students and seemed to have stepped out of the fifties with their perms and their talk about Mummies and Daddies who were all wealthy farmers or something in the Army. 'I suppose she was a bit different from the other girls in the class,' he said finally. 'There was this duck, for instance.'
'Duck?' said Hodge.
'Yes, she used to bring a duck she called Humphrey with her to class. Bloody nuisance having a duck, in a lesson but I suppose it was a comfort to her having a furry thing like that.'
'Furry?' said Hodge. 'Ducks aren't furry. They have feathers.'
'Not this one,' said Wilt. 'Like a teddy bear. You know, stuffed. You don't think I'd have a live duck shitting all over the place in my class, do you?'
